Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Normally this post
is designed to mock the concept of New Year’s resolutions and the bombardment
of gym memberships that will go spiraling down the drain because of the
“holiday of rebirth”. You know how cynical your Dad can be at times. But I’ve changed kids, we all change. Today, I
want to tell you one of the most significant lessons I have learned over the
last few months of my life. And that lesson is a simple, clear phrase that will
get you further down the road than anything else ever will.

Be honest.

For full effect,
download “I’m Gonna Be” by Sleeping At Last, and play at maximum volume
throughout the duration of this post.

Kids, life is full
of deceit. Everyone around you is lying all the time; family, friend, foe, old
fart, young fart, genius, idiot, boy, girl, black, white, green, it doesn’t
matter. Whether it’s the weight on their scales, the dollar amount
attached to their annual salaries, the number of medications they’re popping
back as morning cocktails, or even their alibi for where they were on Friday at
2 in the morning. Everybody lies, that’s plain and simple Brocktrine to its
core. And if someone says they are not lying, you can bet your next stepson
those last four words out of their mouths are laced with slander.

We lie in
relationships. All the time. We lie to the people we want to please the most in
hopes that someday down the road they will see past our dishonesty and settle
for the reality of our disappointment. We tell them we are something special,
when really we’re not. We build imaginary edifices of
creatures we think will be most appealing to those we are in hot pursuit of
attaining. We lie through our teeth, hiding our weaknesses in hopes they will
ignore them and won’t view our shortcomings as potential red flags. We lie
about who we are every single day to every single person we take out to dinner.
Sometimes those lies carry on past engagements and well on into marriages. And
those are the lies that seem to hurt the most.

Why do we do this, kids?
I really don’t know. Maybe it’s because we think people won’t accept us for
having flaws. Maybe it’s because we don’t believe in our true characters, the
characters that only we know exist, the characters that have been built through
years and years of experience and quietly come out when we are by ourselves and
everyone else has left us alone. Maybe it’s because we don’t like ourselves.
And we have this clouded perception that if we don’t like ourselves, then how the
curse word will anyone else like us either? Maybe it’s because this world is a
messed up place, telling us we should be something exceptional, that we should
fit some kind of mold, that we should be a cardboard cutout of success, an expectation of brilliance.

The sad thing is, those expectations we have and the reality that ensues, very rarely, if
ever, match up.

Now kids, I know
over the years I’ve given you points of advice in this blog that I feel are
some of the most important life lessons you need to hold on to during the
course of your own journeys, and who knows where the Muse for this post of
spiritual guidance is coming from. All I can say is this: I don’t care what you
do, I don’t care what faults you have, what screw-ups you’ve
concocted, or what failures you are ashamed to bring out to the public. If you
want to succeed in this life with your academics, with your careers, and most
importantly with the relationships of the ones you hold the closest to you, be
honest and tell the truth.

You may think you
are a complete waste, and that you need to formulate some odd concoction of
mistruths that will make your worth look more appealing on the surface for the
world to judge you. You may think that lies are what will make you look better and
will have you be accepted by someone you want to be with for the rest of your
days. But here’s the thing. In the long run, you won’t look better. In the long
run, those truths will eventually come out into the open. In the long run, your
real character is going to be exposed. And you need to find someone who will
L-word the Hell out of who you really, truly are.